6 days, Schedules Posted

The schedules have finally been posted for the Silver Rush 50 Run and 50 MTB. The mountain bike race has an 8 hour cutoff, meaning that I have to maintain a 9:36 min/mile pace for 50 miles which has 7,382 ft of elevation gain! The run has a more forgiving cutoff of 14 hours, meaning that I have to maintain a 16:48 min/mile pace. Ugh! Hopefully I won’t be racing the cutoffs for these races, but if I am, that means 22 hours of racing over 37 hours. Hopefully the ratio is actually much smaller.Also, Saturday is now in the 7-day forecast, with a projected high of 69 degrees, partly sunny with a 20% chance of showers or thunderstorms, and a west wind at 5 mph becoming calm in the afternoon. A little cooler than my prediction on Friday, but if the forecast holds it will be perfect racing weather. On to other, non-Silver Rush, news, I “ran” the Vail Hill Climb yesterday. The night before I went out with my friends and had a few too many shots of Fireball and didn’t go to bed until 2:30 am. I had to wake up at 7 to be at the race start in Vail Village by 8. Needless to say I wasn’t feeling in racing shape. I arrived in Vail without about 10 minutes to spare so I stopped at Starbucks to buy myself a rice krispie treat and a Venti Awake tea. The rice krispie tasted funny and had a bad texture so unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it, but I did take the tea with me on the race. As soon as the announcer said “go”, everyone took off, except for me and a handful of other people who planned on hiking the race. I fell into step with a woman from Edwards who used to do endurance trail running but now is focusing more on cycling because it’s lower impact on her feet and knees. We chatted the entire way up the mountain, which made the 7.5 mile, 2500 ft gain race that took us 2 hours seem to go by in an instant. We were the some of the very last finishers, which was frustrating because if I had refrained from drinking I could have done well in the race. Oh well, the night was fun and worth the pain. The best part was that 2 hours of exercise cured my hangover.

Breakfast of champions!

At the start

The other 400 people running with me

View from 1/2 up the race course

Breakfast number 2

Afterwards, Mary, Drew, and I went for a hike up to Beaver Lake. The hike starts in Beaver Creek Village and follows Beaver Creek up 3 miles to the lake, which is in Holy Cross Wilderness. You can actually continue up an additional 4 miles to Upper and Lower Turquoise Lakes, but considering the hungover state of our group we decided to save that for another time. The hike up gains almost 1700 feet over 3 miles, but it’s a steady, sustained climb so there isn’t anything too difficult about it and the view at the lake is worth it. At the lake we stopped for lunch and I was contemplating going for a swim but made the mistake of walking into the water instead of just jumping in. By the time the water was up to mid-thighs I was shivering violently so I turned around and just sat on the edge with my feet in the water. After about an hour of relaxing on the lake shore we turned around and hiked down for a beer (for Drew) and soda (Mary and I) at the chophouse.

Beaver Creek

Drew and Mary on the hike

Beaver Lake looking North

Me in the water

Lunch-time!

Relaxing on the shore

The ground was so soft on my bare feet!

Exploring the shore

Yes, I like to take pictures of myself

Drew crossing the beaver dam that formed the lake

Mary

Drew and I

From the other side of the dam

Beautiful slope covered in blue bells!

Another stream crossing

Columbine, the state flower of Colorado

It was an eventful day with a combined 14 miles of hiking and 4183 ft of elevation gain, which is especially impressive considering the state I was in when I woke up. Today is a new day and I think I’ll start it with a hike/run up to Missouri Lakes with Gaby and her little brother!